eco:nomics

Eco:nomics: from the Greek - management of the home; husbandry of resources. Interesting, that...

The sort of economics we tend to be taught at the moment - what's known as neo-classical - places growth as a central tenet. Anyone who has got to the bottom of a bag of toffees, or seen a plant wilt when they forgot to water it, knows that stuff runs out, and that unlimited growth of anything with limited resources is physically tricky.

So we think that we could do with thinking about what we have started to call, One Planet economics. Economic activity that fits within our environmental and social limits. Because anything else would be just plain daft, wouldn't it?

What we'll talk about here is the real meaning of economics, and how we best husband and manage our resources. There are a few blindingly brilliant people working on this (positive deviance rools very ok in the world of traditional economics) and we'll go forth and find them to bring them to your virtual doorstep, right here on this website. Make this page a favourite.

In the meantime, check this out. We absolutely promise you'll laugh. If we're wrong, you can come to our office and demand cake. If we're right, you can come to our office and bring us some.

By manda

Cornwall is UK's first rural Social Enterprise Zone

By manda

social enterprise

This is what we are. A social enterprise; a not for private profit business, trading for people and planet: here to bring benefit to the communities, and the lands, in which we work, and using a business to do that.

By manda

"Why, you must needs be strangers: would you be pleased To find a nation of such barbarous temper, That, breaking out in hideous violence, Would not afford you an abode on earth, Whet their detested knives against your throats, Spurn you like dogs, and like as if that God Owed not nor made not you, nor that the claimants Were not all appropriate to your comforts, But chartered unto them, what would you think To be thus used? this is the strangers case; And this your mountainish inhumanity."

Social enterprises trade just like other businesses; but plough their profit back into activities that benefit people and planet, rather than just lining shareholders' pockets. Wouldn't it be better if your local authority thought like this when buying local services? You could try asking them...Be Positive. Be Deviant. Be creatively disruptive. You might just make something better.